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Danzig shooting victim Shyanne Charles mourned at visitation

Shyanne Charles’ friends and family for a visitation service Friday. Shyanne was killed at a Scarborough barbecue.

Friends and family of Shyanne Charles gathered at Highland Funeral Home for a visitation service Friday. Shyanne, 14, was killed at a shooting at a barbecue in Scarborough on July 16. (Sarah-Taissir Bencharif / Toronto Star)

Dozens of friends and family gathered at Highland Funeral Home for a visitation service Friday.

Inside the funeral home, mourners watched a slide show prepared by the girl’s grandparents. It showed Shyanne smiling, at the arcade. Shyanne grinning from her bed. Shyanne at the park by the swings.

An audio recording of Shyanne singing played: “Nothing that you had seen could have shown you my life’s a dream when I get close to you.”

The lyrics came from a poem written by her uncle Shakiyl Charles, a friend said. The poem is now printed onto the back of a commemorative T-shirt many wore at the visitation.

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Shyanne, 14, was killed at a neighbourhood barbecue in Scarborough on July 16, an innocent victim caught in a crossfire that left another, Joshua Yasay, 23, dead and injured 23. Two police cruisers in the funeral home’s parking Friday were a reminder of that night.

At the visitation, grief blended with anger.

“We need change,” said Shyanne’s stepgrandfather, Everald Eunick.

“They build jails but they don’t build community centres for these kids.”

Mie Ucol came to see her good friend Shyanne. She remembers happier times in their neighbourhood, playing basketball and watching movies with Shyanne.

“It’s really sad when it takes a 14-year-old girl to die for people to realize the damage that gun violence does in Toronto,” said Ucol.

“It really needs to stop.”

Shyanne’s casket, with its signatures and multicoloured messages of love, is a hurt community’s cast, a community waiting to heal.

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